Perspectives
NGOs: A 'new class' shaping the international system?
THE international community is, today, witnessing an interesting devolution of power-hitherto unfamiliar to mankind -- with the vital parts of the states' authority shifting to agencies, organisations like business cartels, international organisations (IO), non-government organisations (NGO), and a myriad other citizens' groups that have emerged as a "new class" in international relations shaping a spanking new global system.
With the advent of nation states with the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the concentration of power in their hands in practically over, and the absolutism of the state system with territorial boundary as guarantee is also withering away. In one of the most influential pieces included in the January/February (1997) issue of the prestigious US journal "Foreign Affairs," Jessica Tuchman Mathews called such a power shift "a novel redistribution of power" in which the nation-state has to inevitably lose its traditional autonomy in a globalised economy.
Indeed, with the governments in decline and war obsolete at the end of the Cold War, a different world was already in the offing, as was argued by Francis Fukuyama in his "end-of-history" hypothesis. Added to that has been the computer and tele-communications revolutionised by the fax-machine, e-mail, satellite hook-up, and internet connections which broke the governments' exclusive hold on the collection and distribution of information. As a result, a global network of business and NGOs could easily assume the responsibility for political, social and security issues.
Increasingly, resources like money, information and popular culture, as well as threats like pollution, terrorism and drug trafficking, freely circulate and shape lives without regards for political boundaries. Thus, an emerging global standard of conduct begins to override the claim of national singularity. These facile changes undeniably catalyse a relative decline of the nation state and portend the rise of non-state entities, which overpower state machineries with surprising ease.
The power shift from a national government to an alliance of for-profit and non-profit NGOs, today's powerful non-state actors, is not without precedent. The British East India Company ran a sub-continent in flying colour, and the activities of some influential NGOs date back more than a century. Britain's history of imperial commercial exploitation linked to Christian evangelism can be a case in point.
The destiny of NGOs in a globalised post Cold War is no less manifest in developing countries. Today, the NGOs deliver more official development assistance than the entire UN system (excluding the World Bank and IMF).
In many countries, it is argued, they are delivering the services that the faltering governments can no longer manage to. Such models of NGO supremacy in places such as Bangladesh and Angola may eventually be applied to developed countries also. In a number of political controversies, the NGOs had successfully conducted lobbying campaigns resulting in a change of government policy even in the industrialised West.
The globalisation of financial markets has left governments everywhere rather despondent. Whereas the government once set the foreign exchange rate, currency traders now trade $ 1.3 billion a day -- 100 times the volume in world trade for years. Obviously, technology has been shifting financial clout from the state to the market because the state can no longer match the transaction.
While national governments set the economic rules, the markets are setting the de facto rules, which can be disregarded only at the cost of losing vital foreign capital and technology, and domestic jobs.
As regards IOs, they were once institutions of the state, by the state and for the state. The states had been circumspect in keeping them on a leash so that they couldn't become too powerful and start interfering in the states' domestic affairs. The IOs were given more and more responsibility, but limited mandate and inadequate funding. It's no more the same. The IOs are now building constituencies of their own and trying to establish direct connection with the people of the world, thus undermining the states' hitherto preserved credibility.
In the meantime, the IOs' collaboration with regimes and inter-governmental institutions dealing with human rights, trade, narcotics, corruption, crimes, refugee, terrorism, arm control and democracy has multiplied manifold, leading to the erosion of the states' autocracy in these fields.
Since the end of the cold war, national governments have succumbed to the pressure of what has how become a convention of election monitoring. The practice has been inexorably denting the states' authority, because such monitoring is no more an exercise in passive observation. It is now carried out by a closely-knit mix of IOs involving large foreign presence, and dispensation of expertise for details like voter registration, campaign law, and even training for the election-conducting officials.
The international financial institutions have interfered rather too starkly into countries' domestic affairs. They attach stringent conditions to loans concerning the recipient government's policy on poverty, the environment, and even military spending, the sacrosanct domain of a nation state.
The new policies allow the World Bank, IMF and other financial institutions to forge alliances with businesses, NGOs and civil societies for achieving broad changes in target countries.
However, the biggest challenge to state authority is perhaps posed by about 35,000 NGOs in the developing countries. This is not because of their sheer numbers but because of their financial resources, efficiency and expertise, which exceed those of smaller governments and the IOs.
In many countries they deliver services in development, education and health that even average governments around the world are incapable of doing.
With all the plusses at their disposal, the NGOs are now able to push around even large governments. On the eve of the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, citizens' groups compelled the signatories to make provisions for health and safety, trans- border pollution, and so on
Although a potential backlash to such dominance by the non-state entities cannot be ruled out, and the risk of an emotional, cultural and political earthquake does exist, the transformation of NGO and corporate supremacy into real power centres is a reality of the moment. After three and half centuries of the nation-state system, it is difficult to imagine entities that could compete with the emotional attachment of a shared landscape, national history, language flag and currency -- let alone allowing it to happen. Yet, it is happening, and the Westphalian arrangements are crumbling.
Many think that a world which is more adaptable, and in which power is more diffused, could mean more peace, justice, and capacity to manage the burgeoning interconnected problems of mankind. There are others who think that continuing globalisation will spark a vigorous reasserting of cultural and economic nationalism.
In any event, the incipient clash between the two trends is likely to escalate. If the current trends continue, the international system -- say 50 years hence -- will be profoundly different. How and where the nation-states settle down in that milieu is to be seen.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments